


Lucky Clover

by Teawithmagician



Series: Brave New But Boringly Old World [3]
Category: Original Work
Genre: Drama, F/M, Het, Original work - Freeform, Post-Apocalypse, Psychology
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-02-10
Updated: 2016-02-10
Packaged: 2018-05-19 14:39:54
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,045
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5970691
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Teawithmagician/pseuds/Teawithmagician
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Jona wants to leave the town. It's not too much left to leave.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Lucky Clover

Jona used to cut her way home through the forest. The forest wasn't big, it was more like a grove, but she called it “the forest”. The forest sounded better than the grove, but in fact, that was a grove, paled from the real forest with the metallic fence. 

Fences were everywhere those times. Fences meant safety, a huge telltale sign on each, GOVERNMENT CARES, written in big letters, and lower, on smaller ones – For Your Own Safety. 

When Jona asked the deputy to dance, he asked, “Ain't nobody dancing with you, Jona Vark?”, and she responded, “That's right.” “Whoa! Why wouldn't boys dance with you?”. “Maybe they just don't think I'm pretty.”“Why would they?” the deputy asked again, his eyes on her. “I wonder, why would they?”

Jona talked to deputy out of despair. Dancing alone was humiliating, Jona could barely stand it. And the deputy was the one you asked for help when the fences appeared because there was no more sheriff in the town.

Jona walked to the table and started to drink punch violently. Her teeth were chattering when the deputy touched her elbow and said, “Let's dance.” Let's dance – that was innocent and funny; an amusing joke; a thing appreciated in the Fence Times.

Deputy was a good dancer, yet a little bit too gusty one. He had a firm chance of stomping off Jona's feet if she wasn't drawing them from under his feet hastily. His hands were dry and heavy; his upper lips was thicker and better shaped than the lower one; his cheeks looked like he could have shaved better; his teeth were yellow and crooked. 

Teeth must have been the ugliest part of his face. When the common cases struck, they struck teeth. Sometimes teeth fell off, sometimes they bleed and shatter. What was left, was crooked for life. 

Deputy said he would see Jona off because sometimes fences got damaged and weren't protecting the town anymore. He said it, pacing along with Jona on the road from the Town Hall, cigarette in his mouth, rifle on his shoulder.

The deputy asked Jona how high her temperature went in the evenings and how much blood she found in the toilet in the morning. Jona mechanically answered, “yes, a little” and “yes, sometimes”. 

His duty was to monitor townsmen health condition and to maintain the order. When the deputy pulled Jona's skirt, asking wasn't it a little bit too short, she clasped the silver lucky clover on the chainlet at her wrist. 

“No,” Jona said. “It is not.”

It was much colder on the threshold of the forest, Jona's skin covered with goosebumps. Deputy's hand were hot and stubborn, so was his breath.

“You have beautiful legs,” the deputy said. He was walking in a step or two behind Jona, and she had a strong feeling he tracked her like a deer.

“Really?” Jona looked at the deputy over her shoulder. She knew he used to hunt deer in the forest behind the fence. He used to be a hunter along with the old sheriff, but the sheriff was gone. 

No sheriff to say what to do or what to feel; the only thing that felt like a bliss. Other things felt more like a sickness.

“I ain't no lying,” deputy's face was covered in the shadows. All that Jona saw was his mutilated teeth. They went deeper and deeper into the grove named "the forest", but it wasn't the way to Jona's home.

“He would have killed us if he knew,” Jona said one day, sitting on the deputy's jacket in the forest. That was a thing she thought about often.

“He would never find out 'till somebody tell him, and you were not telling anyone, aren't you, Jona Vark?” the deputy sat on the ground, his shirt undone to the middle of his chest.

“No. But if I did?” Jona raised her face. She felt his smell coming from her body and failed to find what made her smell like him the most.

“That'd be a problem,” the deputy agreed. “But you didn't.” 

The way he said it, made Jona ask, “You know why?”

“Because it wasn't only me. It was you and me, Jona. I've done nothing but what you've wanted from me.” Deputy looked at Jona, his mouth half-open, the tip of the tongue resting on his lower lip.

“How did you figure out I wanted it?” Jona felt curious. She could ask him about deer-hunting as well, but she went the other way and asked him about the dance-hunting.

She never knew deputy dance-hunted before. But the time had changed. There was no sheriff in the town, only the deputy who had nothing left but the badge and the town.

“You asked me to dance with you.” Deputy's arms were crossed on his knees. Red-tanned arms, the right one having a bulging scar under the thumb.

“I could have done it because of many things.”

“But when you did it, you did it with me.” Again, the look; the tanned red arms, a few scars; upper lip shaped like a curve, lower thin and flat. 

“I didn't want you to do it when I asked you to dance.” 

“Huh?” Deputy sat, his elbows on his knees. She took her time, she bathed in every second of his attention, till the words came put from her mouth: “I didn't want it, first. I wanted it when you took my hand.”

Jona was bad at hiding things. She couldn't even hide her pure hatred towards Math, it might spoil her reliable career choice. Jona's father wanted her either to marry somebody or to become a doctor. Unfortunately, the Biology was the second thing Jona hated after the Math. 

When Jona asked herself whom she was going to be, her mind met blank space. She only knew she would leave the town when having the opportunity. She wouldn't be staying, wouldn't be staying there any longer in any way.

One day Jona told about that the deputy. It was the day he took her for a secret ride behind the fence. It was safe there, he said, and in case it wasn't, he got a gun.

When they were coming out of the fence, Jona had to lie down on the floor of the car between rear and back sits, holding her breath. She needn't hold her breath because soldiers didn't scan the vehicles anymore, but Jona did.

She wanted to see that's left outside so bad she would drink from the toilet or eat a dead rat. Holding the breath was the least that would make Jona's wishes came true.

“Of course, you want to see what's outside,” said the deputy. One his hand was on Jona's knee, warm and heavy, another on the rudder. “Take a breath of the fresh air. Even the sentenced can have it, who not you?”

“I don't want to go to college.” The deputy was driving on the country road, that's why Jona sat next to him on the passenger's seat. There was nobody who could see them out of town, so she looked around, watching forsaken fields around them.

“What the fuck do you want, when?” he turned the wheel and the car slid down the mound to the worn track, showered from both sides. Bushy fields here backed off before the lines of the real forest, pines aiming into the sky like rockets. “It's not like you can choose.”

“I want to see the world outside the town. But that's not going to be college.” Jona looked at the brick-red pines. They remembered her of rust and felt like rubber in the mouth. 

The deputy got out of the car, took the rifle and told Jona to follow him. Climbing the path to the pines, he started to whistle and tell Jona, giving her a look over the shoulder, “You never can tell.” 

“Where are we going?” Jona asked, following the deputy up the steep slope. 

“A beautiful place. You'll see.” Deputy gave Jona the hand, lifting her up, on the firm ground. Together they delved into the pines, Jona walking forward like a pet deer, starting at the clink-clanks of the deputy's rifle behind her back.

She had to get used to it. It was the time of the fences and the rifles. Government cares. For your own safety.

Jona had already forgotten how the real forest felt like. Her forest was truly a puny grove before all this gorgeous green. Beyond the fence it smelled with rosin, rotting mold and dewy ferns. 

The deputy took Jona to the bank of the lake, reflecting the pine tops and the sky. Jona remembered the place: she had been there before. The forest had changed, but the lake remained the same, so clear Jona could count every freckle on her reflection's face even from the distance.

There was quiet clink-clanking of the rifle right behind her. Jona looked around, but there was nobody to shoot at on the banks or in the forest as far as she saw. There was only the deputy, and he was aiming at Jona's head.

“You've started the mess,” deputy said. “You and your dad.”

“I didn't.” Jona made one little step back to the water and stopped when the water licked backs of her shoes. She had nowhere to run.

“You got infected, and you infected everyone else. I lost my daughter,” deputy put his finger on the trigger, “and I lost my wife. And it were you who appeared resistible, after all.”

“Why didn't you kill me after the dances?” asked Jona.

“I am killing you now, Jona Vark. Stop shivering!” Deputy commanded. “I ain't carving your heart out of your chest. The bullet is not the worst thing sticking into your head.”

“What's the worst, then?” questions only delayed the inevitable. Jona felt the water, sensed the air. It was a good day and she didn't want to die though it seemed like she had to.

“You survived, and my daughter's died. Nearly everyone's died. That is over now. That is over,” deputy repeated. There was nobody whom he could try to convince, but he still spoke, looking at Jona with his sick green eyes, blinking rarely.

Jona looked at the deputy and saw the scar on his thumb, still on the trigger. It was a clear trace of the teeth from the mouth of Jona's size. Of a girl like she was, probably of her age.

“I know the place,” said Jona. “You and my father came here deer-hunting. That day he told me they found here a man.”

Jona stood, her fingers clenched in the pocket of her jacket. She found a silver lucky she thought she lost in the grove she called the forest. 

“He had open wounds. Nobody can treat the infected with the open wounds and didn't get infected himself.”

“What are you talking about?” 

“If we met him together, we got infected together..” Jona licked her lips, they were dry. “Your daughter bit you and you didn't sicken. It doesn't work like that. It works like that only if you are...”

The deputy sighed quietly – his lips moved, his chest moved – and pulled the trigger.

Jona squinted, pressing her hands to her ears. The rumble rolled down the forest like a wave, leaving Jona's vision trembling and dividing in two. The sound distorted the space where Jona still had a head to press her hands to.

Forest woke up with the gunfire. Distant howling and moaning told Jona they were coming from their lair. Deputy was no more aiming at her, scar under his thumb bulging like a thick pink caterpillar. 

“Run,” deputy said. “What the fuck are you looking at? Run!”

“Why can't you just kill me?” Jona pulled her arm out of the pocket so hastily, the clover fell out. 

“You want me to give a try?” 

Jona rushed forward and grabbed the clover with a handful of sand. When she turned her back on the deputy and run, nor to the car, neither to the forest – into the burnt with chemicals fields of the county.

They eyes ached at the direct sun, that was what Jona remembered from brochures.


End file.
